An annotation of cuts, depicted locations, and temporal progression in the motion picture &quot;Forrest Gump&quot;

Christian O. Häusler; Michael Hanke

doi:10.12688/f1000research.9536.1

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Data Note

An annotation of cuts, depicted locations, and temporal progression in the motion picture "Forrest Gump"

[version 1; peer review: 3 approved]

Christian O. Häusler ¹, Michael Hanke ^1,2

PUBLISHED 08 Sep 2016

Author details Author details

¹ Psychoinformatics Lab, Department of Psychology, University of Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany
² Center for Behavioral Brain Sciences, Magdeburg, Germany

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REVIEWER STATUS

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This article is included in the Real-life cognition collection.

This article is included in the Data: Use and Reuse collection.

Abstract

Here we present an annotation of locations and temporal progression depicted in the movie “Forrest Gump”, as an addition to a large public functional brain imaging dataset (http://studyforrest.org). The annotation provides information about the exact timing of each of the 870 shots, and the depicted location after every cut with a high, medium, and low level of abstraction. Additionally, four classes are used to distinguish the differences of the depicted time between shots. Each shot is also annotated regarding the type of location (interior/exterior) and time of day. This annotation enables further studies of visual perception, memory of locations, and the perception of time under conditions of real-life complexity using the studyforrest dataset.

Keywords

studyforrest, annotation, natural stimulation, scene perception, time perception, spatial cognition

Corresponding authors: Christian O. Häusler, Michael Hanke

Competing interests: No competing interests were disclosed.

Grant information: Michael Hanke was supported by funds from the German federal state of Saxony-Anhalt and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), Project: Center for Behavioral Brain Sciences.
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Copyright: © 2016 Häusler CO and Hanke M. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Data associated with the article are available under the terms of the Creative Commons Zero "No rights reserved" data waiver (CC0 1.0 Public domain dedication).

How to cite: Häusler CO and Hanke M. An annotation of cuts, depicted locations, and temporal progression in the motion picture "Forrest Gump" [version 1; peer review: 3 approved]. F1000Research 2016, 5:2273 (https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.9536.1) First published: 08 Sep 2016, 5:2273 (https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.9536.1) Latest published: 08 Sep 2016, 5:2273 (https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.9536.1)

Introduction

Cognitive neuroimaging research is moving towards studying brain behavior under conditions of real-life-like complexity, and motion pictures are being utilized with increasing frequency as stimuli in “neurocinematics” studies¹. What sets motion pictures apart from other dynamic naturalistic stimuli is that they are more likely to evoke time-locked response patterns in a larger portion of the brain while retaining synchrony across multiple individuals who are experiencing the same movie^2,3. One likely reason for this is the structure of movies. They are typically not prolonged, contiguous captures of an environment from a first person perspective, but rather they are carefully assembled, using “cuts”, from hundreds of short sequences shot from a variety of perspectives⁴. These cuts are sharp discontinuities in the sensory input that require all viewers to re-assess the depicted environment in order to perform a cognitive re-orientation in fictional space and time. This re-orientation can be complex and involve a large bandwidth of cognitive processes: interpretation of contextual cues for detection of familiar settings, retrieval of prior knowledge from memory, discovery of change in locales and depicted characters. Consequently movies, and their cuts in particular, offer an excellent instrument to study complex, concurrent, real-life cognition.

In this study, we focus on spatial and temporal viewer re-orientation, and, to this end, describe changes in depicted location and time for all cuts in the motion picture “Forrest Gump”. This movie is the core stimulus of the studyforrest project (http://studyforrest.org). Two fMRI datasets are publicly available: 1) participants listening to an audio-movie version⁵ and 2) a subset of the original participants watching the audio-visual movie with simultaneous eye tracking⁶. Additional imaging data and movie annotations are available^7,8, including an individual localization of the parahippocampal place area⁹ that has been implicated in spatial perception and scene processing¹⁰.

This new annotation extends the available knowledge about the structure of this complex natural stimulus and enriches the overall studyforrest dataset. These data can be used to investigate the formation of a representation of viewer location and the perception of (speeded or negative) temporal progression in the movie stimulus. For any study focusing on other aspects of real-life cognition, these new data can serve as additional confound measures describing key properties of major building blocks of this movie stimulus.

Materials and methods

Stimulus

The annotated stimulus was a slightly shortened (≈2 h) version of the movie Forrest Gump (R. Zemeckis, Paramount Pictures, 1994) with dubbed German soundtrack that is identical to the audio-visual movie annotated in 8. Further details on this particular movie cut, and how to reproduce it from commercially available sources, are available in 6.

Table 1. Example annotations for four shots at the beginning of the movie.

Note that table headers do not literally correspond to column headers, see Data legend (ToD: time of day).

time	major location	setting	locale	int/ext	flow of time	ToD
300.56	Greenbow Alabama	doctor’s office	doctor’s office	ext	0	day
311.96	Greenbow Alabama	main street	crossroads	ext	+	day
318.28	United States	flashback countryside	flashback countryside	ext	-	day
343.04	Greenbow Alabama	main street	in front of barbershop	ext	++	day

Annotation procedure

First, the movie was explored by two people, one of whom has an academic background in documentary film making, in order to generate a consistent list of labels for depicted and recurring locations.

Subsequently, the actual annotation was performed by the first author using a multi-pass strategy. The movie was manually inspected frame-by-frame to determine the location of cuts (using the video editor Shotcut v16.02.01). For each new shot (sequence between two cuts), a number of properties (described below) were discerned and entered into a table. A total of four passes were performed by the same observer in order to validate the annotation.

Data legend

The annotation table contains one line per shot and seven columns: 1) a shot’s start time, 2) a label for the shot’s major location, 3) a label for the setting within the location, 4) a label for the locale within the setting, 5) a flag indicating an interior or exterior setting, 6) a label for the type of temporal progression with respect to the previous shot, and 7) a label for the time of day. Further details are provided in the following sections. The respective column header labels are given in parenthesis.

Shot start time (`time`)

A shot’s start time is defined as the onset time of the first video frame of a shot after a cut. Time stamps a provided in seconds of movie onset.

Location

Location was coded with three labels, each describing the depicted scenery with an increasing level of detail.

Major location (major_location) provides a coarse identification at the level of a town, county, or region where the respective story is taking place. Examples are: “Greenbow” or “Vietnam”.

Setting (setting) further details the location by distinguishing places at the same major location, but are not in direct sight of each other. For example, Forrest Gump’s elementary school and the high school’s football field are both in Greenbow, Alabama but are not part of the same setting. A switch from one setting to another is typically synonymous with a transition to a new scene in a cinematographic sense. If the camera switched settings within a scene, the annotation deviates from the screenplay to make explicit the switch to another setting.

Locale (locale) subdivides settings into distinguishable locales. Indoors, a locale is congruent with a particular room enclosed by walls. For example, Forrest Gump’s bedroom, the corridor downstairs, and the corridor upstairs are three different rooms inside the Gumps’ house (setting) on the Gumps’ property (major location). Outdoors, locales were distinguished when they were separated by a logical boundary, substantial distance, or shared no discernible landmarks. For example, the glade at the river and the location of the wounded Bubba are two different locales in the embattled jungle (setting) in Vietnam (major location). A locale’s label is identical to its setting label when only one locale is depicted for that setting.

Interior or exterior (`int_or_ext`)

This flag indicates whether a particular location is an open (“ext”) or enclosed space (“int”), such as a building or a vehicle.

Temporal progression (`flow_of_time`)

This label indicates the depicted progression of time between the previous and the current shot. Four categories were distinguished: “-” labels a flashback, or jump into the past, independent of the temporal distance; “0” indicates no noticeable break in the ongoing stream of time, for example a sole change of viewing perspective; “+” represents noticeable jumps in time, ranging from several seconds to about one or two hours; and lastly “++” marks major time jumps from several hours (e.g. night vs. day) to several years.

Time of day (`time_of_day`)

This flag indicates whether a scene is at least partially illuminated by sunlight. Consequently, daytime and twilight (early sunrises and late sun settings) are labeled as “day”. If sunlight is entirely missing, the time of day is coded as “night”.

Dataset content

The released annotation is a single, text-based, comma-separated-value (CSV) formatted table (Dataset 1).

time	major_location	setting	locale	int_or_ext	flow_of_time	time_of_day
0.00	Paramount	mountain logo	mountain logo	ext	0	day
17.00	Savannah	sky over Savannah	sky over Savannah	ext	++	day
168.08	Savannah	bench at bus stop	bench at bus stop	ext	0	day
272.20	Greenbow Alabama	doctor's office	doctor's office	int	-	day
286.32	Greenbow Alabama	doctor's office	doctor's office	int	0	day
300.56	Greenbow Alabama	doctor's office	doctor's office	int	0	day
311.96	Greenbow Alabama	main street	crossroads	ext	+	day
318.28	United States	flashback countryside	flashback countryside	ext	-	day
343.04	Greenbow Alabama	main street	in front of barbershop	ext	++	day
353.08	Greenbow Alabama	main street	in front of barbershop	ext	0	day
358.08	Greenbow Alabama	main street	in front of barbershop	ext	0	day
360.04	Greenbow Alabama	main street	in front of barbershop	ext	0	day
361.84	Greenbow Alabama	main street	in front of barbershop	ext	0	day
363.04	Greenbow Alabama	main street	in front of barbershop	ext	0	day
385.64	Gump property	access-road	at the mail boxes	ext	+	day
402.80	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	+	day
425.60	Gump property	Gump House	front of Gump House	ext	0	day
434.48	Greenbow Alabama	school	Hancock's office	int	++	day
438.56	Greenbow Alabama	school	Hancock's office	int	0	day
443.44	Greenbow Alabama	school	Hancock's office	int	0	day
447.76	Greenbow Alabama	school	school hallway	int	0	day
462.44	Greenbow Alabama	school	Hancock's office	int	0	day
466.84	Greenbow Alabama	school	Hancock's office	int	0	day
471.36	Greenbow Alabama	school	Hancock's office	int	0	day
475.52	Greenbow Alabama	school	Hancock's office	int	0	day
492.68	Greenbow Alabama	school	Hancock's office	int	0	day
496.08	Greenbow Alabama	school	Hancock's office	int	0	day
500.16	Greenbow Alabama	school	school hallway	int	0	day
507.68	Greenbow Alabama	school	Hancock's office	int	0	day
512.32	Greenbow Alabama	school	Hancock's office	int	0	day
516.88	Gump property	Gump House	front of Gump House	ext	++	night
522.24	Gump property	Gump House	front of Gump House	ext	0	night
526.76	Gump property	Gump House	front of Gump House	ext	+	night
555.72	Gump property	Gump House	Forrest's bedroom	int	+	night
586.48	Gump property	Gump House	front of Gump House	ext	++	day
594.84	Gump property	Gump House	corridor downstairs	int	0	day
612.08	Gump property	Gump House	corridor upstairs	int	+	day
630.40	Gump property	Gump House	Jenny's bedroom	int	0	day
632.48	Gump property	Gump House	Jenny's bedroom	int	0	day
633.64	Gump property	Gump House	Jenny's bedroom	int	0	day
636.36	Gump property	Gump House	Jenny's bedroom	int	0	day
656.88	Gump property	Gump House	Jenny's bedroom	int	0	day
659.44	Gump property	Gump House	Jenny's bedroom	int	0	day
669.56	Greenbow Alabama	main street	in front of electronic store	ext	++	night
675.00	Greenbow Alabama	main street	in front of electronic store	ext	0	night
679.80	Greenbow Alabama	main street	in front of electronic store	ext	0	night
681.56	Greenbow Alabama	main street	in front of electronic store	ext	0	night
686.20	Greenbow Alabama	main street	in front of electronic store	ext	0	night
692.52	Greenbow Alabama	main street	in front of electronic store	ext	0	night
702.56	Savannah	bench at bus stop	bench at bus stop	ext	++	day
712.68	Gump property	access-road	at the mail boxes	ext	-	day
721.36	Gump property	access-road	at the mail boxes	ext	0	day
727.44	Gump property	access-road	at the mail boxes	ext	0	day
730.08	Gump property	access-road	at the mail boxes	ext	0	day
732.88	Gump property	access-road	at the mail boxes	ext	0	day
738.44	Gump property	access-road	at the mail boxes	ext	0	day
740.68	Gump property	access-road	at the mail boxes	ext	0	day
743.08	Gump property	access-road	at the mail boxes	ext	0	day
745.16	Gump property	access-road	at the mail boxes	ext	0	day
752.24	Greenbow Alabama	school bus	inside driving bus	int	0	day
755.24	Greenbow Alabama	school bus	inside driving bus	int	0	day
757.88	Greenbow Alabama	school bus	inside driving bus	int	0	day
759.32	Greenbow Alabama	school bus	inside driving bus	int	0	day
760.64	Greenbow Alabama	school bus	inside driving bus	int	0	day
761.64	Greenbow Alabama	school bus	inside driving bus	int	0	day
770.24	Greenbow Alabama	school bus	inside driving bus	int	0	day
771.28	Greenbow Alabama	school bus	inside driving bus	int	0	day
778.52	Savannah	bench at bus stop	bench at bus stop	ext	++	day
791.04	Greenbow Alabama	school bus	inside driving bus	int	-	day
799.56	Greenbow Alabama	school bus	inside driving bus	int	0	day
801.76	Greenbow Alabama	school bus	inside driving bus	int	0	day
806.28	Greenbow Alabama	school bus	inside driving bus	int	0	day
808.00	Greenbow Alabama	school bus	inside driving bus	int	0	day
813.44	Greenbow Alabama	school bus	inside driving bus	int	0	day
829.32	Greenbow Alabama	school bus	inside driving bus	int	0	day
833.48	Greenbow Alabama	school bus	inside driving bus	int	0	day
836.96	Greenbow Alabama	school bus	inside driving bus	int	0	day
839.88	Greenbow Alabama	school bus	inside driving bus	int	0	day
847.32	Greenbow Alabama	tree on a field	tree on a field	ext	++	day
852.12	Greenbow Alabama	tree on a field	tree on a field	ext	+	day
857.20	Greenbow Alabama	tree on a field	tree on a field	ext	++	day
861.16	Greenbow Alabama	tree on a field	tree on a field	ext	+	day
865.20	Greenbow Alabama	tree on a field	tree on a field	ext	++	day
872.32	Greenbow Alabama	tree on a field	tree on a field	ext	0	day
886.08	Savannah	bench at bus stop	bench at bus stop	ext	++	day
891.16	Savannah	bench at bus stop	bench at bus stop	ext	0	day
899.80	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	-	day
901.80	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
902.96	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
904.88	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
906.00	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
907.96	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
909.04	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
910.48	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
911.28	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
912.72	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
914.80	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
916.40	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
919.96	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
924.88	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
928.16	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
931.16	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
932.56	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
933.92	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
935.56	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
937.32	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
943.32	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
945.64	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
948.16	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
951.08	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
953.84	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
959.60	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
961.44	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
963.24	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
964.88	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
968.72	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
972.56	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
975.08	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
980.00	Savannah	bench at bus stop	bench at bus stop	ext	++	day
983.28	Savannah	bench at bus stop	bench at bus stop	ext	0	day
984.88	Savannah	bench at bus stop	bench at bus stop	ext	0	day
991.24	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	-	day
1000.60	Gump property	access-road	meadow near Gump House	ext	0	day
1008.96	Greenbow Alabama	road with bridge	road with bridge	ext	+	day
1015.48	Greenbow Alabama	road between trees	road between trees	ext	+	day
1018.72	Greenbow Alabama	main street	in front of barbershop	ext	+	day
1026.76	Greenbow Alabama	Jenny's house	front of Jenny's house	ext	+	day
1040.28	Greenbow Alabama	Jenny's house	front of Jenny's house	ext	0	day
1061.20	Greenbow Alabama	Jenny's house	front of Jenny's house	ext	0	day
1072.92	Greenbow Alabama	Jenny's house	field near Jenny's house	ext	0	day
1074.96	Greenbow Alabama	Jenny's house	field near Jenny's house	ext	0	day
1078.64	Greenbow Alabama	Jenny's house	field near Jenny's house	ext	0	day
1083.32	Greenbow Alabama	Jenny's house	field near Jenny's house	ext	0	day
1084.72	Greenbow Alabama	Jenny's house	field near Jenny's house	ext	0	day
1086.84	Greenbow Alabama	Jenny's house	field near Jenny's house	ext	0	day
1094.68	Greenbow Alabama	Jenny's house	field near Jenny's house	ext	0	day
1110.28	Greenbow Alabama	Jenny's grandma's trailer	Jenny's grandma's trailer	ext	++	day
1123.88	Gump property	Gump House	front of Gump House	ext	++	night
1135.80	Gump property	Gump House	Forrest's bedroom	int	+	night
1144.40	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	++	day
1149.36	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
1150.20	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
1153.04	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
1154.36	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
1155.08	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
1157.36	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
1160.64	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
1162.00	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
1163.16	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
1164.08	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
1165.04	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
1166.36	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
1167.64	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
1169.80	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
1171.64	Gump property	access-road	inside the pursuing car	int	0	day
1173.00	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
1174.44	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
1175.48	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
1177.80	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
1178.68	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
1180.40	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
1189.56	Gump property	access-road	alley to Gump House	ext	0	day
1192.12	Gump property	access-road	meadow near Gump House	ext	0	day
1194.00	Savannah	bench at bus stop	bench at bus stop	ext	++	day
1201.80	Greenbow Alabama	football field	road next to football field	ext	-	day
1210.76	Greenbow Alabama	football field	road next to football field	ext	0	day
1218.24	Greenbow Alabama	football field	stands	ext	0	day
1219.12	Greenbow Alabama	football field	on the football field	ext	0	day
1219.96	Greenbow Alabama	football field	stands	ext	0	day
1222.48	Greenbow Alabama	football field	on the football field	ext	0	day
1226.68	Greenbow Alabama	football field	stands	ext	0	day
1231.12	Greenbow Alabama	football field	stands	ext	0	day
1232.84	Greenbow Alabama	football field	stands	ext	0	day
1235.88	Greenbow Alabama	football field	on the football field	ext	0	day
1241.04	University of Alabama	football stadium	football field in stadium	ext	++	day
1241.92	University of Alabama	football stadium	stands	ext	0	day
1244.84	University of Alabama	football stadium	football field in stadium	ext	0	day
1250.84	University of Alabama	football stadium	technical area	ext	0	day
1253.72	University of Alabama	football stadium	football field in stadium	ext	0	day
1258.40	University of Alabama	football stadium	football field in stadium	ext	0	day
1261.28	University of Alabama	football stadium	stands	ext	0	day
1265.88	University of Alabama	football stadium	technical area	ext	0	day
1268.84	University of Alabama	football stadium	football field in stadium	ext	0	day
1270.76	University of Alabama	football stadium	football field in stadium	ext	0	day
1273.52	University of Alabama	football stadium	football field in stadium	ext	0	day
1277.08	University of Alabama	football stadium	football field in stadium	ext	0	day
1279.28	University of Alabama	football stadium	end zone	ext	0	day
1284.28	University of Alabama	football stadium	technical area	ext	0	day
1292.56	University of Alabama	Margaret Mitchell Hall	Margaret Mitchell Hall	ext	++	night
1297.84	University of Alabama	Margaret Mitchell Hall	Margaret Mitchell Hall	ext	0	night
1300.64	University of Alabama	Margaret Mitchell Hall	Margaret Mitchell Hall	ext	0	night
1302.88	University of Alabama	Margaret Mitchell Hall	Margaret Mitchell Hall	ext	0	night
1306.24	University of Alabama	Margaret Mitchell Hall	Margaret Mitchell Hall	ext	0	night
1310.80	University of Alabama	Margaret Mitchell Hall	Margaret Mitchell Hall	ext	0	night
1314.44	University of Alabama	Margaret Mitchell Hall	Margaret Mitchell Hall	ext	0	night
1319.84	University of Alabama	Margaret Mitchell Hall	Margaret Mitchell Hall	ext	0	night
1323.20	University of Alabama	Margaret Mitchell Hall	Margaret Mitchell Hall	ext	0	night
1324.16	University of Alabama	Margaret Mitchell Hall	Margaret Mitchell Hall	ext	0	night
1329.56	University of Alabama	Margaret Mitchell Hall	Margaret Mitchell Hall	ext	0	night
This is a portion of the data; to view all the data, please download the file.

Dataset 1.CSV table with of depicted locations, and temporal progression in the motion picture “Forrest Gump”.

Each row corresponds to a shot in the the movie

The source code for all descriptive statistics included in this paper is available in Dataset 2 (Python script).

Dataset 2.Python script to compute all descriptive statistics presented in the Data Note manuscript from the released annotations.

Dataset validation

To check for human error in the cut time annotation, timings were compared to the results of an automatic detection algorithm and any deviation was manually verified.

In summary, the shortened version of the movie comprises 870 shots (duration: min=0.48 s, max=151.08 s, median=4.92 s, SD=10.86 s). There are 612 shots depicting outdoor locations and 256 interior shots. Most shots take place during daytime (706 day vs. 162 night). The majority of cuts involve no noticeable discontinuities of depicted time (640), but there are 61 small and 135 large time jumps, as well as 32 flashbacks.

Table 2 provides information on the portrayal of unique locations in the movie.

Table 2. Descriptive statistics for all three levels of location annotation.

Number of shots indicates the total number of shots in the movie for any particular location. Number of consecutive shots indicates how many shots are shown between two location changes at the respective level. Times revisited indicates how often a location reappears in the movie after it was depicted for the first time.

	major locations				settings				locales
number of unique	21				95				147
	min	med.	mean	max	min	med.	mean	max	min	med.	mean	max
number of shots	1	14	41.3	195	1	2	9.1	104	1	2	5.9	58
number of consecutive shots	1	2	7.3	70	1	2	4.7	69	1	1	3.2	32
times revisited	0	1	4.7	21	0	0	0.9	20	0	0	0.9	20

Data and software availability

F1000Research: Dataset 1. CSV table with of depicted locations, and temporal progression in the motion picture “Forrest Gump”, 10.5256/f1000research.9536.d134823¹¹

F1000Research: Dataset 2. Python script to compute all descriptive statistics presented in the Data Note manuscript from the released annotations, 10.5256/f1000research.9536.d134824¹²

Author contributions

CH designed, performed, and validated the annotation, and wrote the manuscript. MH provided critical feedback on the procedure and wrote the manuscript.

Competing interests

No competing interests were disclosed.

Grant information

Michael Hanke was supported by funds from the German federal state of Saxony-Anhalt and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), Project: Center for Behavioral Brain Sciences.

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Daniel Kottke for cross-checking the timing of the cuts in the movie using an automated detection routine, and Alex Waite for editing this manuscript. We would also like to thank Gavin Theren for patiently sharing his cinematographic knowledge during movie watching and for his high-level gastronomic skills.

F1000 recommended

References

1. Hasson U, Landesman O, Knappmeyer B, et al.: Neurocinematics: The neuroscience of film. Projections. 2008; 2(1): 1–26. Publisher Full Text
2. Hasson U, Malach R, Heeger DJ: Reliability of cortical activity during natural stimulation. Trends Cogn Sci. 2010; 14(1): 40–48. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text | Free Full Text
3. Lankinen K, Saari J, Hari R, et al.: Intersubject consistency of cortical MEG signals during movie viewing. Neuroimage. 2014; 92: 217–224. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text
4. Cutting JE, Brunick KL, DeLong JE: The changing poetics of the dissolve in Hollywood film. Empirical Studies of the Arts. 2011; 29(2): 149–169. Publisher Full Text
5. Hanke M, Baumgartner FJ, Ibe P, et al.: A high-resolution 7-Tesla fMRI dataset from complex natural stimulation with an audio movie. Sci Data. 2014; 1: 140003. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text | Free Full Text
6. Hanke M, Adelhöfer N, Kottke D, et al.: A studyforrest extension, simultaneous fMRI and eye gaze recordings during prolonged natural stimulation. bioRxiv. 2016. Publisher Full Text
7. Hanke M, Dinga R, Häusler C, et al.: High-resolution 7-Tesla fMRI data on the perception of musical genres – an extension to the studyforrest dataset [version 1; referees: 2 approved with reservations]. F1000Res. 2015; 4: 174. Publisher Full Text
8. Labs A, Reich T, Schulenburg H, et al.: Portrayed emotions in the movie "Forrest Gump" [version 1; referees: 2 approved]. F1000Res. 2015; 4: 92. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text | Free Full Text
9. Sengupta A, Kaule F, Guntupalli JS, et al.: A studyforrest extension, retinotopic mapping and localization of higher visual areas. Scientific Data, accepted.
10. Epstein R, Kanwisher N: A cortical representation of the local visual environment. Nature. 1998; 392(6676): 598-601. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text
11. Häusler CO, Hanke M: Dataset 1 in: An annotation of cuts, depicted locations, and temporal progression in the motion picture “Forrest Gump”. F1000Research. 2016. Data Source
12. Häusler CO, Hanke M: Dataset 2 in: An annotation of cuts, depicted locations, and temporal progression in the motion picture “Forrest Gump”. F1000Research. 2016. Data Source

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VERSION 1 PUBLISHED 08 Sep 2016

Author details Author details

¹ Psychoinformatics Lab, Department of Psychology, University of Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany
² Center for Behavioral Brain Sciences, Magdeburg, Germany

Competing interests

No competing interests were disclosed.

Grant information

Michael Hanke was supported by funds from the German federal state of Saxony-Anhalt and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), Project: Center for Behavioral Brain Sciences.
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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Published: 08 Sep 2016, 5:2273

https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.9536.1

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© 2016 Häusler CO and Hanke M. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Data associated with the article are available under the terms of the Creative Commons Zero "No rights reserved" data waiver (CC0 1.0 Public domain dedication).

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Häusler CO and Hanke M. An annotation of cuts, depicted locations, and temporal progression in the motion picture "Forrest Gump" [version 1; peer review: 3 approved] F1000Research 2016, 5:2273 (https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.9536.1)

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ApprovedThe paper is scientifically sound in its current form and only minor, if any, improvements are suggested

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Version 1

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Reviewer Report 03 Oct 2016

Ming Meng, Department of Psychological Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA

Approved

https://doi.org/10.5256/f1000research.10273.r16767

This data note labels cuts in the motion picture "Forrest Gump" with starting time, three levels of location information, indoor/outdoor information, temporal progression, and the time of day. An automatic detection algorithm was also used to validate the labeling. It ... Continue reading

This data note labels cuts in the motion picture "Forrest Gump" with starting time, three levels of location information, indoor/outdoor information, temporal progression, and the time of day. An automatic detection algorithm was also used to validate the labeling. It is very interesting as it provides an important tool for anyone who may be interested to study perception, attention, and other cognitive functions. I would like to thank the authors for their efforts and sharing this wealth of data.

The introduction and data description including materials and methods are all clearly written. I approve this article.

Minor points:
It might be informative to provide to readers that among the total number of deviation of human labeling and automatic detection, how many were human errors and how many were computer errors.

Page 3, last sentence: typos?

Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed.

I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard.

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Reviewer Report 22 Sep 2016

Dylan Wagner, Department of Psychology, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

Approved

https://doi.org/10.5256/f1000research.10273.r16188

This data note describes an annotation dataset consisting of time indices and annotations describing location and temporal information for each identified shot in the movie Forest Gump. This dataset of movie annotations is intended to be used with the associated ... Continue reading

This data note describes an annotation dataset consisting of time indices and annotations describing location and temporal information for each identified shot in the movie Forest Gump. This dataset of movie annotations is intended to be used with the associated functional neuroimaging datasets of participants viewing the movie Forrest Gump. All in all, I think this is an excellent addition to the growing empire that is StudyForrest, one that clearly represents an enormous amount of effort.

I have only minor comments:

The timing seems to be a bit off relative to the previously released dataset of scenes in the studyforrest GitHub repository. Presumably the annotation for shots and scenes should line up at scene starts but there appears to be consistent offset of about 12ms. For example, the last scene (“School bus stop”) starts at 6944.96 in the scenes.csv and 6944.84 in the attached dataset for shots in this paper. Moreover, the shots in this annotation don’t quite line up with the shots.csv on the github repo. The ~12ms offset is too large to be a single frame. It appears the authors switched from Advene to Shotcut for movie segmentation and annotation, perhaps therein lies the source of the mismatch?

Could the authors expatiate on their method of identifying shots and cuts? If memory serves, in previous datasets they used an automated method to identify shots that was subsequently edited by hand. In this dataset, it appears all shots were identified by hand. Where all cuts identified? Or are there special cases were two cuts appearing in close succession were considered a part of one shot? For instance, in an action heavy scene you could presumably get an overabundance of cuts, but that level of granularity isn’t really useful (nothing changes) and potentially these could be combined into a single shot. If every cut was indeed identified and annotated, then my sincere condolences to the coder!

Although it is extremely generous of the authors to provide python code for generating descriptive data and associated figures, I’ve examined this code file and unfortunately this reviewer simply cannot support the premature use of Python 3… You can pry 2.7 from my cold dead hands. ;)

Finally, I would like to again thank the authors for openly sharing this wealth of data with the community. These annotations and the associated imaging data represent a generous sharing of valuable resources, one that I have no doubt will be useful to many researchers interested in the neuroscience of naturalistic cognition.

Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed.

I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard.

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Reviewer Report 14 Sep 2016

Julien Dubois, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA; Department of Neurosurgery, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Approved

https://doi.org/10.5256/f1000research.10273.r16187

This Data Note presents a very useful (and labor intensive!) complement to the studyforrest dataset, providing additional annotations that can be used for data analysis: the timings of all the cuts in the movie, together with the depicted location and ... Continue reading

This Data Note presents a very useful (and labor intensive!) complement to the studyforrest dataset, providing additional annotations that can be used for data analysis: the timings of all the cuts in the movie, together with the depicted location and temporal progression for each transition. There are of course many, many other features that can be labeled in this movie, yet this particular set of features is useful on its own and will add to the bank of features already available. I have no major changes to suggest.

Minor comments:

would the authors consider publishing the code for the automated detection routine that they used to cross-check manual cut detection?
a few cuts are annotated as locale "unknown_...". Is there no label that can be used rather than unknown? (I don't currently have the movie available to check these four cuts, at time stamps 4544.32, 4554.96, 4559.32 and 4561.56).

Very minor comments:

the second sentence in the Introduction, "What sets motion pictures apart from other dynamic naturalistic stimuli is that they are more likely to evoke time-locked response patterns in a larger portion of the brain while retaining synchrony across multiple individuals who are experiencing the same movie", is rather unclear to me, in particular the use of "while" which indicates a contradiction -- why would time-locked responses in large portions of the brain not be synchronous across individuals?
typos:

- in Materials and Methods/Shot start time (time) : correct to "Time stamps *are* provided in seconds *from* movie onset".

- caption of Dataset 1: correct to "CSV table with depicted locations and temporal progression [...]"
table 1: for consistency, maybe the column headers should be the same as in the actual csv file?

Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed.

I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard.

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Version 1

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Version 1 08 Sep 16	read	read	read

Julien Dubois, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, USA; Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, USA
Dylan Wagner, Ohio State University, Columbus, USA
Ming Meng, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA

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Reviewer Report

13 Views

03 Oct 2016 | for Version 1

Ming Meng, Department of Psychological Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA

13 Views Cite this report Responses(0)

Approved

This data note labels cuts in the motion picture "Forrest Gump" with starting time, three levels of location information, indoor/outdoor information, temporal progression, and the time of day. An automatic detection algorithm was also used to validate the labeling. It is very interesting as it provides an important tool for anyone who may be interested to study perception, attention, and other cognitive functions. I would like to thank the authors for their efforts and sharing this wealth of data.

The introduction and data description including materials and methods are all clearly written. I approve this article.

Minor points:
It might be informative to provide to readers that among the total number of deviation of human labeling and automatic detection, how many were human errors and how many were computer errors.

Page 3, last sentence: typos?

Competing Interests

No competing interests were disclosed.

I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard.

Respond to this report

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Reviewer Report

18 Views

22 Sep 2016 | for Version 1

Dylan Wagner, Department of Psychology, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

18 Views Cite this report Responses(0)

Approved

This data note describes an annotation dataset consisting of time indices and annotations describing location and temporal information for each identified shot in the movie Forest Gump. This dataset of movie annotations is intended to be used with the associated functional neuroimaging datasets of participants viewing the movie Forrest Gump. All in all, I think this is an excellent addition to the growing empire that is StudyForrest, one that clearly represents an enormous amount of effort.

I have only minor comments:

The timing seems to be a bit off relative to the previously released dataset of scenes in the studyforrest GitHub repository. Presumably the annotation for shots and scenes should line up at scene starts but there appears to be consistent offset of about 12ms. For example, the last scene (“School bus stop”) starts at 6944.96 in the scenes.csv and 6944.84 in the attached dataset for shots in this paper. Moreover, the shots in this annotation don’t quite line up with the shots.csv on the github repo. The ~12ms offset is too large to be a single frame. It appears the authors switched from Advene to Shotcut for movie segmentation and annotation, perhaps therein lies the source of the mismatch?

Could the authors expatiate on their method of identifying shots and cuts? If memory serves, in previous datasets they used an automated method to identify shots that was subsequently edited by hand. In this dataset, it appears all shots were identified by hand. Where all cuts identified? Or are there special cases were two cuts appearing in close succession were considered a part of one shot? For instance, in an action heavy scene you could presumably get an overabundance of cuts, but that level of granularity isn’t really useful (nothing changes) and potentially these could be combined into a single shot. If every cut was indeed identified and annotated, then my sincere condolences to the coder!

Although it is extremely generous of the authors to provide python code for generating descriptive data and associated figures, I’ve examined this code file and unfortunately this reviewer simply cannot support the premature use of Python 3… You can pry 2.7 from my cold dead hands. ;)

Finally, I would like to again thank the authors for openly sharing this wealth of data with the community. These annotations and the associated imaging data represent a generous sharing of valuable resources, one that I have no doubt will be useful to many researchers interested in the neuroscience of naturalistic cognition.

Competing Interests

No competing interests were disclosed.

I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard.

Respond to this report

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Back to all reports

Reviewer Report

23 Views

14 Sep 2016 | for Version 1

Julien Dubois, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA; Department of Neurosurgery, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA, USA

23 Views Cite this report Responses(0)

Approved

This Data Note presents a very useful (and labor intensive!) complement to the studyforrest dataset, providing additional annotations that can be used for data analysis: the timings of all the cuts in the movie, together with the depicted location and temporal progression for each transition. There are of course many, many other features that can be labeled in this movie, yet this particular set of features is useful on its own and will add to the bank of features already available. I have no major changes to suggest.

Minor comments:

would the authors consider publishing the code for the automated detection routine that they used to cross-check manual cut detection?
a few cuts are annotated as locale "unknown_...". Is there no label that can be used rather than unknown? (I don't currently have the movie available to check these four cuts, at time stamps 4544.32, 4554.96, 4559.32 and 4561.56).

Very minor comments:

the second sentence in the Introduction, "What sets motion pictures apart from other dynamic naturalistic stimuli is that they are more likely to evoke time-locked response patterns in a larger portion of the brain while retaining synchrony across multiple individuals who are experiencing the same movie", is rather unclear to me, in particular the use of "while" which indicates a contradiction -- why would time-locked responses in large portions of the brain not be synchronous across individuals?
typos:

- in Materials and Methods/Shot start time (time) : correct to "Time stamps *are* provided in seconds *from* movie onset".

- caption of Dataset 1: correct to "CSV table with depicted locations and temporal progression [...]"
table 1: for consistency, maybe the column headers should be the same as in the actual csv file?

Competing Interests

No competing interests were disclosed.

I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard.

Respond to this report

Responses (0)

[1] 1. Hasson U, Landesman O, Knappmeyer B, et al.: Neurocinematics: The neuroscience of film. Projections. 2008; 2(1): 1–26. Publisher Full Text

[2] 2. Hasson U, Malach R, Heeger DJ: Reliability of cortical activity during natural stimulation. Trends Cogn Sci. 2010; 14(1): 40–48. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text | Free Full Text

[3] 3. Lankinen K, Saari J, Hari R, et al.: Intersubject consistency of cortical MEG signals during movie viewing. Neuroimage. 2014; 92: 217–224. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text

[4] 4. Cutting JE, Brunick KL, DeLong JE: The changing poetics of the dissolve in Hollywood film. Empirical Studies of the Arts. 2011; 29(2): 149–169. Publisher Full Text

[5] 5. Hanke M, Baumgartner FJ, Ibe P, et al.: A high-resolution 7-Tesla fMRI dataset from complex natural stimulation with an audio movie. Sci Data. 2014; 1: 140003. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text | Free Full Text

[6] 6. Hanke M, Adelhöfer N, Kottke D, et al.: A studyforrest extension, simultaneous fMRI and eye gaze recordings during prolonged natural stimulation. bioRxiv. 2016. Publisher Full Text

[7] 7. Hanke M, Dinga R, Häusler C, et al.: High-resolution 7-Tesla fMRI data on the perception of musical genres – an extension to the studyforrest dataset [version 1; referees: 2 approved with reservations]. F1000Res. 2015; 4: 174. Publisher Full Text

[8] 8. Labs A, Reich T, Schulenburg H, et al.: Portrayed emotions in the movie "Forrest Gump" [version 1; referees: 2 approved]. F1000Res. 2015; 4: 92. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text | Free Full Text

[9] 9. Sengupta A, Kaule F, Guntupalli JS, et al.: A studyforrest extension, retinotopic mapping and localization of higher visual areas. Scientific Data, accepted.

[10] 10. Epstein R, Kanwisher N: A cortical representation of the local visual environment. Nature. 1998; 392(6676): 598-601. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text

[11] 11. Häusler CO, Hanke M: Dataset 1 in: An annotation of cuts, depicted locations, and temporal progression in the motion picture “Forrest Gump”. F1000Research. 2016. Data Source

[12] 12. Häusler CO, Hanke M: Dataset 2 in: An annotation of cuts, depicted locations, and temporal progression in the motion picture “Forrest Gump”. F1000Research. 2016. Data Source

An annotation of cuts, depicted locations, and temporal progression in the motion picture "Forrest Gump"

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Materials and methods

Stimulus

Table 1. Example annotations for four shots at the beginning of the movie.

Annotation procedure

Data legend

Shot start time (time)

Location

Interior or exterior (int_or_ext)

Temporal progression (flow_of_time)

Time of day (time_of_day)

Dataset content

Dataset validation

Table 2. Descriptive statistics for all three levels of location annotation.

Data and software availability

Author contributions

Competing interests

Grant information

Acknowledgements

References

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Shot start time (`time`)

Interior or exterior (`int_or_ext`)

Temporal progression (`flow_of_time`)

Time of day (`time_of_day`)